“We have to do things in our own way, and that's what we've done from the start with the song,” Kjetil Mørland, who wrote the duet, explained at a press conference in Vienna on Tuesday. “We kind of wanted to bring something new to the competition.”
On the face of it, though, what they’ve brought is exactly what Norway offered last year.
Like Silent Storm by burly ex-bouncer Carl Espen, it's a piano-driven ballad backed up by soaring strings.
The difference is in the song's cleverness.
It shows a man confessing to his lover to having done “something terrible in my early youth,” leaving us inevitably imagining the worst, only for her to miraculously not reject him.
The reason the lyrics strike above the normal Eurovision level probably has something to do with Mørland’s time fronting the UK Indie-rockers Absent Elk, whose high point was being invited to perform their cover of Girls Aloud's The Loving Kind in front of a vast crowd at London's O2 stadium on the back of their YouTube version.
In fact, he'd only recently moved back to Norway to start his solo career when he submitted the song to Norway’s Melodi Grand Prix last year, having spent most of his adult life around Shoreham on the Sussex coast.
Scarlett is also a recently returned expatriate Norwegian. After being born and raised in Basel, Switzerland, she came to Norway in 2013 to compete in Norway’s version of The Voice, using her real name Joanna Bussinger.
Mørland settled on her after searching Youtube for Norwegian singers who'd fit the song.
“I wrote the song as a duet, so I had to find a lovely girl to sing it with,” he explained in a press conference in Vienna, and Debrah's got the character and fragility to her voice which really resonates with the song.”
Scarlett said it was initially difficult, as she was used to singing songs she had written herself.
“But the song really grew on me and I guess the chemistry between us came very quickly,” she explained.
The brilliant video released in March played up the dark, decadent aspect, placing the two at a country house party, with Mørland in a dinner jacket and Scarlett in a black cocktail dress.
Despite its lavish production, Mørland insists the video was made on a shoestring, and directed by his cousin.
In Vienna, the duo have been playing down the darkness a little, with Mørland appearing at the dress rehearsal in a white t-shirt and skinny jeans.
They've also showed their light-hearted side by singing a version of Fairytale by Alexander Rybak, the song which won Eurovision for Norway in 2009 and still holds the record for the highest ever score received in the contest.
In one interview, Mørland suggested that the character in the song hadn’t even done much out of the ordinary.
“The lyrics are about a dark secret from your past which they haven't managed to talk about,” Mørland said. “I think that's something everyone can relate to.”
Scarlett agreed that the song was “very honest”. “It is about everything else but being perfect. It is telling the other person that you actually did something pretty awful.”
Only the lyrics seem to suggest it’s so much worse than that.
Overthinking It, a Los Angeles-based podcast for geeks, has even gone so far as to start a “Monster Like Me Contest!” where listeners can suggest what terrible act lurks in the man's past.
Lyrics:
Honey, I’m telling the truth
I did something terrible in my early youth
My mind went blank, I lost control
I was just a little boy, I did not know
I better let you go
To find the prince you thought you found in me
I better set you free and give you up
Just wave and say goodbye and let you live
Without a monster like me
Honey, what am I to you?
I have pulled the trigger on this awful truth
Oh, hold me now ’cause I’m burning up
Sing me something beautiful, just make it stop
I better let you go
To find the prince you thought you found in me
I better set you free and give you up
Just wave and say goodbye and let you live
Without a monster like me
Oh… oh…
Oh… oh…Just go
To find the prince you thought you found in me
I better set you free and give you up
Just wave and say goodbye and let you live
Without a monster like me, oh
Without a monster like me
Here's the rehearsal last week.
Here's the original video:
And here's them playing Alexander Rysbak's Fairytale at the Nordic party on Tuesday night.
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